Working Effectively with Use Cases

Who Should Attend and Prerequisites

Product Owner, Business Analyst, Software Analyst, Test, QA, Testers, ScrumMaster, Process Advocate, Project Manager and anyone else involved in product development, especially software product development. Sometimes these roles are categorized by responsibilities such as requirements capture, design, gathering, refining, business decomposition, requirements trace or development. In summary, those who require strong skills in systematizing complex logic, communicating and building products.

Effective for helping teams build a community of practice with deep applied expertise. Beginner to Intermediate, all job titles

When and Where:

This course should be run in one engagement. We offer offsite facilities for those who wish to break the status quo by staying in the same offices day after day. Holding meetings off-site will often improve the focus of the attendees and decrease the desire to write emails, talk on the phone and attend meetings. This course is a great way to kick-off major development efforts while simultaneously diving into greater detail.

Why:

This course reflects the current and progressive thinking on use case writing. Some of these current thoughts are

• use cases should be unfolded as needed through increased levels of detail,
• use cases are open ended and therefore too big for driving development efficiently,
• use cases can be an effective way to wrestle with analyzing complex domains  while not getting trapped into premature commitment for building product
• use cases can provide a tight mapping of requirements being considered to those actually being built

The art of use case based analysis has evolved and will continue to evolve. For those people working in complex business domains, use cases are an essential technique for navigating the shifting delta of requirements. Simply, writing a good use case by holding to form (following a template) is insufficient. What we need is an effective technique for helping us explore, understand, and refine as we commit to building our system incrementally.

Why 3Back:

We have created a course with many ideas pulled from the our experience in teaching the Jolt Award winning book "Writing Effective Use Cases”, “Essential Use Cases“  and many more. However, these books like many written materials are not current and effectiveness of their techniques have been superseded. Although many of the techniques presented will stand the test of time, many others are already lagging newer more effective practices.

We are publishing a manual and based our course on our evolved thoughts for “Effectively Managing Analysis Effort”. We choose the name of this course to emphasize that use cases are not just an effective analysis technique but, rather are best when they help us navigate a way to successful product development outcomes.

Each instructor is a senior designer and consultant, who has written use cases professionally on the job and has been working in the field for years. Besides being experts on “working effectively with use cases” our instructors are not "slide turners", and can provide references on request.  Additionally each instructor has effectively managed large development efforts from start to finish and worked across the enterprise at the project chartering and strategic planning level.

What:

The course will move between a mix of instruction and applied exercises that involve talking, writing and reviewing in small groups. We have seen repeated success in small group activities and we favor a style of 5-6 people at small tables so that they can each participate and make observations. We will write use cases in good form, understand unfolding information and how we focus our energy on the importance of validating in priority order, pieces the software system we are exploring.

• What a great Use Case looks like
• How and when to unfold stories from a Use Case
• Creating sharp definitions of “done” for all the work we do
• How and when to validate the “right product”
• Why avoiding and eliminating waste is tightly coupled to an agile analysis
• Why the success of our products is strongly influenced by our analysis
• The importance of involved prioritization to maintain focus
• Daily retrospection to pull out key concepts and lessons learned

For What:

Understand and note what a use case is for, how to write one. Understand how to unfold a use case, and when to unfold a given piece. Understand that managing our energy and work with use cases has a tremendous impact on our product development effort. Highlight the critical thinking skills that mark the difference between those that succeed and those that flounder. How to write clear manageable Use Cases that unfold information as needed. Identify common pitfalls, writing and working through some examples.

Course Parameters:

Length:  2 days, 3 days or 4 days (days 3 and 4 are applied to your domain and your challenges; we call these facilitated days; please inquire to gain a specific understanding). A compressed 1 day session is available for private focused team training but, is not recommended unless the team members are very strong.

Price:  for private course please inquire

Size:    Class will be strictly limited to a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 21 participants.

History of This Course

This course has a long history. We have evolved it dramatically over the last 10 plus years based on course feedback as well as practical application. This course supersedes "Writing Effective Use Cases" and reflects an evolution of practices that have moved beyond many of these ideas. What we have found in practice is that use cases are more than just "simple well written English prose" and simply teaching people to write use cases is not enough to help them use "use cases" in an applied setting. What we have found works best is to teach the unfolding-pattern and thought that occurs as we explore the domain we are analyzing. Please contact us for a detailed conversation and explanation.